CDs. Keep in mind that this information is also available in your manual in much greater depth and detail, and accordingly, the manual is the primary resource to be used.

Welcome to The Time of Your Life:

More Time For What Really Matters To You!

Wel.come to The Time of Your Life-an opportunity to create more time for what really matters to you. To make it easy for you, I've made this program really simple to use: each day you'll listen to one tape or CD set, and do an assignment that will reinforce what you've learned and help you apply it to your own life. There's also a customized workbook, this set of summary cards and a video that I created especially f~r you.

These summary cards have been created as a quick and easy way for you to access your assignments after you've listened to the audio tapes or CDs. On most days your assignment will be as simple as answering four or five questions. You'll also find some of the diagrams I describe verbally on the tapes and

Again, welcome to The Time of Your Life, and enjoy the journey-l look forward to hearing about your results and the incredible quality of life you've created for yourself and all those you have the privilege to touch.

Keep living with passion!

THE POWER OF Focus

In today's complex world, we play multiple roles and want to excel at everything. We often believe "there's not enough time," but remember: time is nothing but an emotion, a feeling. How lonz somethinz lasts is based on how we feel, and

00.

our feelings change by a change in perspective.

Focus is the ultimate power that can change the way we think, the way we feel, and what we do in any moment. When we change our focus, we change our lives. vl1hat we focus on determines the direction we will go.

Real happiness comes from controlling your focus. Those who fail to focus their time (their emotion) on the areas that really matter live in reaction to three things:

1. Anything that leads to pain

2. Anything that leads to immediate pleasure

3. Other people's demands

If you want to change your life, ask better questions. OPA is a process of thinking that provides more choices, leads to a sense of balance, and moves us toward what we really want-the things that are most important.

The OPA Life Management System provides flexibility and freedom. Have you eve.r che~ed off everything on your to-do list but sh.ll felt li.ke vou haven't rea 11 y accomplished anythmg? WIth the OPA system, you don't nee~ to d? y~ur whole to-do list: 20% of your actions WIll gIve you 80% of the results.

OPA's three questions will shape your thinking in a brand-new way, producing magnificent results and extraordinary levels of fulfillment.

"Success without fulfillment is failure." OPA is a practical way to turn dreams into reality and achieve true fulfillment.

YOUR AsSIGNMENT

/A.The first secret 1:0 creating a change is awareness, "y so let's find out what you're currelltlyfocusjng on:

• What are some areas you focus on in life that don't really serve you? Are there some things you fear or don't want to experience but often find yourself thinking about anyway? Write down two or three things you often focus on that make you feel stressed or overwhelmed.

< 1\.. The way to get nwre time is to get rid of the ":/ unnecessary things ihai "stea/" your time,

• V\'hat activities do you do on a regular basis that you really don't have to or that someone else could easily do for you? "'Tite down one or two now. Then write down one or two things that you don't

have a sense of real purpose for, that don't give you 'juice,' or relate to an outcome or result you want, and yet you find yourself doing.

A. Now let's focus on what YOll do want (and later ""l we'll create a plan to make it Q retllity).

• What's something you want to achieve, experience, learn, or master? Take a moment now to write down one or two specific outcomes or :results you want for your life----tbings that if you were to achieve them would reaI1y "jujce' YOll.

By controlling our focus, developing aw_areness, and eliminating the belief that stress IS a natural part of life, we can reduce the amount of time we spend in the outer dimensions. First, we must change our old "?eliefs ~bout "urger:cy./f We must stop living in reaction to outside demands and realize that "urgent" is not the same as "important."

More time comes not from changing your schedule but by changing your level of fulfillnumt .. When you love what you'r;,({O'ing, time disapI?ears. Make sure you spend your tune, emotion, and focus on what you can control your state of mind and what things mean.

YOUR AsSlGNMENT

l' Look at the outer ring of the Control Model. Make a '/ list of the things you can't control or influence but contillue to waste time on anyway.

/~ ~rite down all the reas~ns why you know it's silly, ""Y ridiculous, stupid, and insane to spend time on the things you listed in #1.

~ Oev;lop a new belief Write a simple phrase that ""y you re gomg to start USll1g as an 'incantation.' For example: "This is a waste of rnv time I'm not going to do it anymore," or "I've set a new standard for myself," or "I can't control that. Let me focus on what I can control."

/,0.., Row to CI'~at(' more time now.

"'Y A. Identify some activities that are not really Important, but because of the sense of

urgency you place on them, you spend time ?oing them. Or things that are not urgent or Important, and yet they waste your time.

B. Estimate how much time you spend each day or week on these items that don't really matter, or when items that you could leverage to someone else.

C. Having found more time for your life by eliminating the activities listed in step A, make a list of the activities, projects, and areas you want to spend time on that would give you more fulfillment. Make the decision right now to spend a specific number of hours each week on those things that matter most to you. You do have the time!

~ Don't leave the site of setting a goal without "Y takmg the first step toward its attainment.

Call somebody, get on the Internet, write a note or letter, or schedule a meeting, but do something to make sure one of those items on your list actually happens.

THE WHEEl OF LIFE

Categories keep UE out of overwhelm, allow us to manage better, and help us focus on all the important areas of our lives to create balance.

For each category on the Wheel, draw an arc that represents your current status. Ask yourself: "If 100% is where T really want to be, where am I

now?" -

Connect the six arcs to create a single shapeyour Wheel of Life. (You may want to fill it in for added emphasis.) If this wheel were on your "car of We," how would it run?

Using your strongest (outermost) categories as a guide, draw a circle. This shows where your other categories need to be in order for your "\Theel to be round.

In our lives, we have two Areas of Management: personal and professional. Within each area, we have areas that we must continually focus on and constantly improve in order for the quality of our lives to improve. We call these areas Categories of Improvement. 111en, within each Category of Improvement, we identify the results-the specific outcomes we really want. For example, if one Category of Improvement is your physical body, you have specific results you want to achieve, like weighing 175 pounds or having 15% body fat.

Ongoing inspiration comes from a vision that inspires, excites, and drives us. Categories are the targets, but roles provide

he juice,

THE POWER OF VISION

Successful people do the things that failures won't do. Successful people have passion, enthusiasm, and a vision.

"Big visions move people." If you want to succeed, the first step is to get a vision that's powerful enough to move you.

Reasons comes first; answers come second. Wllen we believe we can make something happen, we'll find a strong enough reason and start noticing the resources we have. Remember, 80% of success is psychology; 20% is mechanics.

YOUR AsSIGNMENT

"LIFE IS COMPLEX. OUR GOAL IS TO MAKE

IT SIMPLE." -ANTHONY ROBBINS

The lan.guage you use to describe the roles of your life can immediately transform how you feel-abollt them. It's one thing to be a 'Stockbroker' and another to be a 'Treasure Hunter.' Would you rather be a 'Spouse' or an 'Ultimate Lover?'

Use this principle to your advantage by identifying roles for the personal and professional catezories vou created durinc this session. Start with

b ~ 0

your personal life. As you look at each of your cat-

egories (physical, emotional, financial, etc.), list two or three roles that will cause you to want to spend time there. Then look at your professional life and do the same for those categories as well

Make your roles playfulI fun, and juicy so you can't wait to spend yaur time there!

THE SUCCESS CYCLE

Everyone is on a Success Cycle. Which direction are you going?

ACTION

POTENTIAL

RESULTS

BELIEF!

ATTITUDE

Downward Cycle: You believe you have limited potential so you only take a little bit of action, get limited results, and reinforce your belief. ("See, I knew I couldn't do it!")

THE SUCCESS CYCLE (CONTINUED)

Upward Cycle: You believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that you can get the result you want You may not know exactly how, but you believe the potential is there, so you tap into it with massive action and massive potential. You tend to get pretty outstanding results, reinforcing your belief. ("See, I knew I could do it!") Now you're even more inspired, you believe even more in your potential, you take even more action, and you get even greater results. The cycle continues!

''Without a vision, people perish." If you're in a downward cycle, a bigger vision will change your direction.

Lltimate Vision: In this category, what's your ultimate outcome? Take the image and make it brighter, closer, bigger. Step into it and feel like vou're that person right now, The more vividly vou can feel, think about, or imagine it, the more real it becomes. You'll be pulled to it like a magnet.

Ultimate Purpose: Why do you want to feel, look, move this way? What will it give you to be this person? What is your ultimate purpose to go with this vision? Think about that. Feel it. How would you language your purpose?

Roles: Who will you be as this person? What roles will you play? What fun words describe who you are as this person?

My ViSION FOR SUCCESS

My MAGNIFICENT 7 FOR UNSTOPPABLE MOMENTUM

Resources: What resources are available to help you realize your vision? Who can coach or mentor you? What books, tapes, or financial resourc-es are available to help you?

Three to Thrive: Choose three areas within this category that you probably need to focus on most often to realize your vision.

One-Year and 90-Day Goals: Think of your oneyear and 90-day goals for this category, making them very specific and measurable.

Identify your ultimate vision, purpose, resources, and goals. Use the tape or CD to guide you through the process and help you with the visualization. You can do this exercise in one of two ways:

• If you're the kind of person who likes to just go for it, do it all at once. You'll need a quiet place where you won't be interrupted for about 90 minutes.

• Or you can do two or three categories at a time over the course of three or four days.

THE POWER Of A CLEAR OUTCOME & PURPOSE

1 A Then you know your outcome, you never V V lose sight of your real target. If you know your purpose, you know the why-you have the power and passion to find your way to it. Wnen you have a flexible action plan, you have unlimited choices on how to make it happen. That's the Power of OPA!

THE POWER OF CHUNKlNG

We have the ability in our minds to take any experience in life and pull it apart into a million pieces or to tie it all together into one piece.

Learning how to group things together that are similar into one chunk of thought, or focus can keep us from feeling overwhelmed and give us

~ With your Categories of Improvement in "y front of you, get into a peak state.

~ For each category, close your eyes and visual"S/ ize the six parts of the pyramid (see "My Vision for Success" in your workbook.)

A ~ediately capture your vision by writing ~ It down.

the power of synergy. Remember, most _peopT"" are only able to focus on a limited number oi things at one time. When most people a_q; learning they tend to remember things that are grouped into threes. We tend to remember things as one, two, three, many!

CHUN KIN G

(chunk' ing), v., Grouping together information into ideally-sized pieces that can be used effectively to produce the results you want,

Look at your sample to-do list. A list of twelve items or more is more difficult to remember

With the OPA system, you can easily "chunk" your to-do list from twelve items into just three or four results or outcomes you're after, and create an OPA block: an outcome, a purpose, and a set of action items for each.

All twelve of these items can easily fit into three or four outcomes. This is something your brain can easily remember.

As you can see, four of the twelve action items can be grouped into one OPA block:

ACTION

OUTCOME

OPA BLOCK

PURPOSE

1. Go RU NING

2. Buy RU ING SHOES

3. VE1GHTS

4. ScHmutE MASSAGE

To RENEW THE ENERGY WITHIN ME; To DEVELOP A SENSE OF INNER STRENGTH LIKE NEVER BEFORE; To HAVE FUN!

OPA IS A VISUAL IICHUNKlNG,j DrnCf (CONTINUED)

OPA is a visual chunking system. What that means is that it allows us to know specifically where to put information so we'll remember it. Remember when we said people have a hard time remembering more than three chunks of information at a time?

Now take a moment to give yourself a test. Look at the following group of letters for just 5 seconds, then cover them up, and write down as many as you can remember on a piece of paper:

How did you do? If you were successful, you probably chunked it into three parts like: Q E L • BE U U • A R U Q.

OI, if you had some experience, you may have been able to chunk it this way:

Wouldn't it have been easier to remember the eleven letters on the last page in three chunks, or evert in one? That's the power of chunking!

/A. Decide which things relate to each other. ""'--Y Group them together under a single outcome.

<3> Create an exciting purpose.

<VEnhance your action list by asking, IllAT I:> VI hat else could I do to make major

progress on this outcome?" Remember,

OPA is about creating more options.

YOUR AsSIGNMENT

YJot down an event in your life where you had a clear outcome and purpose. Choose a time when you came up with a plan and even though the plan didn't work, yOU still got the outcome or the result vou were after anyway because you were ~·o clear about what you really wanted.

<2:> Think about an event in your life where you had unclear outcomes and an unclear purpose. Did you get frustrated and miss out on something in the end? Can you see the importance of having a clear outcome?

A Think of something you fail to do on a reg"'Y ular basis. What's an area of your life in which you don't seem to be able-to motivate yourself to follow through because you either make the task seem too big and overwhelming or you break it down into a million pieces that make it seem as though the job could never get done? Take a moment and jot down an example of this.

~ Is there something you find easy to do that "Yother people find difficult? For instance, exercise or paperwork may come naturally to you. Think of something that seems to come easy to you because you think of it as only one or two steps.

THE FIVE MASUR STEPS FOR CREATING A PlAN

1 A ]hat's beautiful about OPA is that it allows y V us to consistently focus on what we 'want, why we want it (so the drive is there), and gives us a specific plan that is flexible. Many times when you pursue an outcome it takes a different action plan than your original, but this is critical because often when you've set a goal or an out-

orne and you begin to pursue your action plan, it doesn't pan out. You then have the opportunity to try a new plan in order to still get your result.

In order to create an outcome-focused, purposedriven action plan there are Five Master Steps. They are;

Step 1: Capture

Brainstorm your ideas, wants, and needs.

Step 2: Create your Master Plan

Begin chunking your action items by asking ::r three OPA questions.

1. What's my Outcome?

2. What's my Purpose?

3. What Actions must I take to achieve it?

Step 3: Commit your time, resources, and resp on sibi Ii ti es

Number your outcomes based on the priority in which you want to do them.

Step 4: Schedule

Schedule those items which have a specific time and can't be moved, and schedule blocks of time to work on other outcomes-

Step S: Measure, manage, master, and

celebrate

1£ you want to make something better, measure it often. You can't manage something effectively unless you measure it.

1: A Jhether you manage a home, a corporation, Y V or your own business, you must learn to master projects. Sometimes achieving an outcome is not as simple as one single OPA block. Rather, it requires that you complete a project-an ultimate outcome that requires many other outcomes to be achieved.

In managing projects, we use the Five Master Steps with a slight difference in the first two steps: rather than capturing our to-dos and creating a simple plan, we're going to first discover our ultimate outcome and the ultimate purpose of why we're going to make it happen. Once we know the big picture result we're after, then we begin to ask ourselves what major results, or 'must outcomes,' are necessary to complete in order to achieve the ultimate pur-

pose of the project. ext we'll create a p ="' ~~ ~ each one of these must outcomes-s-and gwrrc::r tee the success of the project as a whole-

Our goal is to constantly simplify. The Ol'A system of thinking organizes even the most complex life or business into manageable chunks. Instead of a million action items, we can narrow OlIT focus first to one of two areas, either personal or professional; then to one specific category in that area; then to one project, one OrA block, and finally down to the individual action items.

Mega Projects

A project that has so many outcomes that it feels overwhelming might be a mega-project. When it gets that big, create a table of contents for your must outcomes. Combine outcomes that are related to each other into "key result areas."

A SUMMARY OF THE 1M LEVElS Of MANAGING YOUR LTFE (CONTINUED)

Levell. Action Items

An action item is one simple, specific, measurable action that you can take today.

Level 2. OPA Blocks

OPA blocks require more than one action item to accomplish. Each OPA block has an outcome, a purpose, and an action plan. An OPA block might take a day, an hour, or a week to complete.

Level 3. Projects

Projects ~usually take more than a week or sometimes even months to accomplish and require more than one OPA block to achieve the result you're after.

Level 4. Categories oUmprovement

Categories are the central components in making it easier to manage your life. They allow you to approach both challenges and opportunities one at a time. Categories don't go away; they're ongoing areas of either your business or professional life that require consistent focus and improvement. Each category has a vision and a goal; the goals become either projects or OPA blocks.

If a category contains so Illill1y projects that it feels overwhelming. you might need to crea te "key result areas" or chapter titles to help you manage it (see pr0jects.)

Level 5. Areas of Management

In most cases, you'll have two areas of management personal and p~ If you're responsible for managing a diYisian, a team or an entire rnmpan~ you might want a third area of ~~

YOUR AsSIG N MINT

~ It's moving day-time to move in to your ~ OPA Life Planner! Use your monthly calendar only for specific events that must happen on a certain day at a certain time. Record addresses and phone numbers in your A-Z section.

i>USing either your software program or a project planner, start planning a project. 1bink of a project you really want to accomplish, maybe something important that you've been putting off because it seems too big.

~ Identify your ultimate outcome. What's "(y the ultimate result you want from this

project? If you start thinking of to-des,

PATHWAYS TO POWER

In the beginning, this process might seem to take forever but that's just because you're learning something new. Once you've been doing it for a while, you'll get good at it and vou'Il start noticing similar patterns. Remember; patterns are power. The magic of OPAis that voull be able to use all or parts of fue p!arui .00 create ~aain and again. You can also find Someone l\-ho has produced a result yun -.mt an nse their OPA as Pathways to Po ~er fur ,",ourself.

/0.. Capture ideas in your weekly planning sec'ij tion as soon as you think of them. Keep at least four weekly planners in your binder.

,/,'\.,_Schedule a weekly Hour of Power. Choose , ,,":/ the time that is best for you to do the fourstage planning process (e.g. Friday or Sunday afternoon), Lock it in, be consistent, and don't change it,

E Yery decision carries consequences. When you associate to what decision making means to your life, you can begin to make effecbye decisions.

Everything you now have in your life is the result of the actions you have taken, but all of your actions have been fathered by decisions. Remember, "Success is the result of good judgment, good judgment is the result of experience, and experience is often the result of bad judgrnent."

The only failure is failing to decide.

If you want to get good at making decisions, make more of them. If you make the >'.'fong ones, you'll learn more quickly and you can use what you've learned to make better decisions in the future.

We can't control events or other peop~ :.>...< _

do have the power to decide. We OIlL.o;ja •• make three decisions:

1. What to focus on.

2. What things are going to mean.

3. What to do.

OOC/EMR

Outcome. What result are vou after? If there's more than one, what's their' order of priority? Options. If you have one option, you have no choices. If you have two options, you have a dilemma. If you have three or more options, you have a choice.

In order to be upset. ~'OU haw 1D fI:J:rg5 all ]be great things in yOU! life znd fIXD5 on Ibe m:p ative, The EmotionalFkn:i proeess dees ... - G;::.~ opposite------use it to i:a:ke ~ -:c:::rr ti:ic_focus on the posil:in~! L:e:be:apE e;r{])::::r"::i this session to !!Uirl'e YOll ::XDl!~

THE SIX Hu \AN NEEDS

eride how you're going to be each and everv day. Think about the roles you're going to play -in your life, me outcomes you're ~ and your ultimate purpose.

.- set of standards, when

.!ifie and anything tha t

~~~at. =-= ~ and know ~~

THE SIX HUMAN NEEDS (co TlNUW)

CmI!ll~dirlll:

.OCIT life is well organized, you have "more :::::.te." and you spend it in The Zone, doing ,,,-har's most important to you.

G::uwih and Contribution:

_-ou have more time for learning and ~\-mg to others.

YOUR AsSlGNMENT

- lake VOllI Code of Conduct. Write a list of /~tions or states that you're committed to ?fild:idng every day.

A CODE OF CONDucr

• Be fun • Be playful

• Be loving • Be nice'

• Be grateful • Be focused

• Be flexible • Be passionate

• Be disciplined • Be strong

• Be healthy • Be smart

• Be romantic • Be cheerful

• Be happy • Be jOYOUE

• Be an example of all the good that's possible in people's lives.

AMy personal challenge to you is this: Step ""V yPl Pick up that life planner and do whate~er you haven't done in these last ten days. SIt do;"'rn and create yOllT life plan. Follow through and discover everything you're capable of. Review the last ten days: and do OT finish any assignments or exercises you may have missed.